Seoul Later this week, North Korea is expected to launch a long-range missile with a satellite on board; it’s likely to be just the first in a series of provocations by Pyongyang this year — including another earth-shaking nuclear test.

We’ve had plenty of warning. Besides crowning Kim Jong Un as the newest king of the “Kim-dom,” the regime’s prodigious propagandists are busy painting 2012 as the year North Korea will emerge as a “strong and prosperous” nation.

The launch of the Kwangmyongsong (Bright Star) satellite to commemorate the 100th birthday of North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung sometime between April 12 and April 16 is supposed to provide some proof of Pyongyang’s new polished-up persona.

Some analysts believe North Korea shares its nuclear work with Iran — and that Tehran, which put up its own satellite in 2009, has aided Pyongyang’s satellite-launch program. If so, this attempt is more likely to succeed.

If the launch does orbit Pyongyang’s first satellite (after two previous failures), it may help distract the North’s hungry hordes with a tasty meal of nationalistic pride. It’ll also best rival South Korea, which has failed twice to put up its own satellite.

Shamefully, the launch’s estimated $1 billion price tag is believed to be enough to feed the famished North for as long as a year.

For America, the big issue is that a successful space launch means Pyongyang is closer to deploying an ICBM capable of more accurately reaching more US territory. (Right now, analysts think it can hit the US West Coast with questionable accuracy.)

But there’s more. North Korea followed each of its last two long-range missile launches (in 2006 and 2009) with nuclear tests; if the pattern holds, we’ll get more atomic activity sometime this year.

And while Kim Jong Un has yet to assume his father’s title of chairman of the National Defense Commission, what better way to mark the end of the Kim family’s dynastic power transition than with a big bang?

There may be technical reasons for a nuke test, too: to assess progress on a warhead to — tahdah! — mate to a long-range rocket like the one being used for this week’s satellite launch.

Or Pyongyang may want to test the fruits of its long-secret, uranium-based nuke program. (Current bombs are made of plutonium.) Experts predict a highly-enriched uranium test will come in the next year or two.

Oh, and a pro-North Korea newspaper in Japan hinted at another reason Pyongyang might go radioactive: to show pique over Team Obama’s decision to suspend food aid it promised in a Feb. 29 deal in exchange for a moratorium on long- range missile and nuclear tests.

But Pyongyang’s provocations probably won’t be limited to missiles and nukes. Some North Korean cognoscenti believe that, with both South Korea and the United States holding presidential elections this year, Pyongyang may do something to shake up the political landscape.

In the last couple of years, the North has sunk a South Korean warship (using a mini-sub torpedo), shelled an island and hatched a (failed) plot to assassinate the South’s defense minister.

Nice folks, those North Koreans.

Beyond this sort of “routine” North Korean mayhem-making, cyber attacks are possible. According to US Forces Korea, in the cyber crosshairs are US and South Korean “military, governmental, educational and commercial” targets.

All this is to say that, while there had been reason for cautious optimism based on North Korea’s generational leadership change, this is starting to look like the year Pyongyang ensures that hope — once again — doesn’t triumph over experience.

Peter Brookes is a Heritage Foundation senior fellow and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense.